How Do Dental Implants Work: Process and Timeline?
If you have missing teeth, then dental implants are here to help you replace them. Dental implants feel, look, and function like your natural teeth and help you feel more confident. An implant is an artificial tooth that your dentist anchored to your jawbone using a titanium post to prevent it from slipping or falling out or even moving. If you’re wondering how implants are placed in your mouth, read this article to learn more about tooth implants. Also, you’ll learn about how Dental Wellness of Suffern restores your beautiful smile with a dental implant or several of them.
What’s a Dental Implant Procedure?
The time needed to complete a dental implant procedure ranges from a single office visit to a two-year implant process timeline. The timeline also depends on the complexity of your dental problems. The most common issues that extend the dental implant timeline are the need for tooth extractions and bone grafting. If you don’t require any of these procedures and you only need a single dental implant, then our dentist will be able to install your tooth implant in one office visit that takes two hours.
These steps will help explain the dental implant procedure in detail. When you visit our offices for a tooth implant, expect the following:
Initial Consultation
During this consultation, you will need an X-ray or a CT scan, and your dentist will take impressions of your teeth. You might also need to see some specialists, including:
- Periodontist
- General dentists
- Prosthodontists
- Orthodontists
- Oral Surgeon
- Nose, ear, and throat specialist or ENT
Your dentist in Suffern will also review your medical history and will need to know if you have any underlying medical conditions that can affect the outcome of your procedure. If you have gum disease, your dental professional will treat that before beginning the dental implant. When everything is good, the dentist will develop a dental Implant treatment plan specifically designed for your needs.
If you are a smoker, you will have to quit smoking for the duration of getting a dental implant.
Your dentists determine whether you need a bone graft to help accommodate your dental implants in Suffern. If you do, the dentist will tell you what to expect from the bone graft procedure. Your dentist will also discuss the costs of tooth extraction, bone grafting, and dental implants. They’ll provide you with your tooth implant cost breakdown and the dental implant process timeline designed to meet your unique needs. The dentist will also discuss the stage two dental implant surgery with you and explain the procedure’s benefits and drawbacks.
Dental Implant Surgery Step-by-Step
A dental implant procedure near you requires several steps independent of the aftercare steps. When getting immediate implants in Suffern, you’ll be given a sedative before the dentist starts any work.
Next, the dentist will cut your gums to expose your jawbone. They will use a small drill to make a hole to insert the titanium implant into your jawbone. This procedure takes two hours to complete. Your dentist will then give you a healing collar for about two weeks. This helps ensure that your gums won’t heal over the Implant. If it comes off, notify your dentist so it can be reinstalled. During the healing time, osseointegration will take place.
Osseointegration
This is where tissues from around the post assimilate into a jawbone so that it becomes permanently implanted into the bone. Usually, this process takes three to six months for your lower jaw and seven months for your upper jaw.
Placing Abutment
Once your gums are healed, you will go back to your dentist’s office to complete the final steps in the tooth implant appointment procedure. The abutment helps secure the crown in place, but it is sometimes installed simultaneously as the metal post.
Placing of the Artificial Teeth
This’s the last step of the dental implant procedure. Once your gums have fully healed, and osseointegration is complete, your dentists will make an impression on your teeth and mouth and use them to fabricate your temporary and permanent artificial teeth. You wear the temporary tooth until fabrication is complete. Then you will return to your dentist’s office to place your permanent dentures, which is the last step in your dental implant procedure.